Kanye West Quotes

When I first started rapping, when I switched my style to more like a punch line style - this is when I'm like 13 years old - and I switched it to this real wordy - I was trying to rap like Canibus and like Eminem. It was real lyrical, real wordy and punch lines and, when I would come up with these punch lines and spit 'em in these cyphers, the minute the cyphers would be like, "Ohhh" and everybody would break away, it was a new feeling for me. It was like, "Oh, yo, you see what I just did?" I was addicted to that feeling, and I still love that feeling.

I would challenge more hip hop artists that are rapping about what it's like to be real and the social ills that we face, if you aren't backing Bernie Sanders, I have to question your credibility in terms of do you mean the songs you're writing.

Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water.

I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.

No," I replied testily. "I'm pretty sure 'digital' is Latin for 'fingeral,' so finger cancer equals digital cancer. This is all basic anatomy, Dr. Roland." The Dr. Roland told me that he thought I was overreacting, and the "fingeral" wasn't even a real word. Then I told him that I though he was underreacting, probably because he's embarrassed that he doesn't know how Latin works. Then he claimed that "underrecating" isn't a word either. The man has a terrible bedside manner.

The chords in 'Light My Fire' are based on [John] Coltrane's version of this song. He just solos over A minor and B minor, which is exactly what we did. Coltrane had played with Miles on Kind of Blue and took the idea of modal soloing over one or two chords farther out than anybody. He was a real pioneer - he just kept evolving, going where no one had ever gone. He could always attain this state of ecstasy when he played. Live, there was so much energy, you couldn't believe it. He would play for hours. It was indescribable.

As important as politics are to me, the life and the spirit of people's emotions are much more important. People live real lives where they love and grieve and feel pain and joy and that is a whole separate sphere. All that political stuff, I believe in it strongly, but not as strongly as I believe that at some point you or someone is going to need a song to sit with and comfort them in a hard time.

The literacy level at Mississippi prisons? Fifth grade. Can't read, what are you going to do? If you've got a conviction rap, what are you going to do? It's a real crisis.

Rap - so many words, so little said.

You try to be arrogant in songs because you can't be in real life.

The best songs come unasked for. You don't have to think about them . . . Summer is good for songs. When it's real warm, if you have a sense of freedom, not a lot on your mind, and a feeling there's plenty of time, it just seems to be a good climate for music.

When a rap song glorifies violence, death and sadness and loss is inflicted because of the violence.

I've written this song called 'Insania' - it's a mix of Insane and Mania, and even though it's a made up word you instantly know what it means!

I like the idea that within the structure of the song, some kind of built-in improvisation keeps them fragile and in their moment, so that I'm not projecting so much, so that my perception of the song doesn't interfere with what its real body is. Sometimes it's like telling a story that I heard in passing, and I don't want it to become completely mine.

One of the things that I'm dying to do is to sing the hook on a big rap song. No one's ever called me to do that.

I feel like there's a lot of rappers that could out-rap me and I wouldn't want to face any of them.

I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah...

I'm not a real good musician, but I can write [a song] pretty well. I experiment once in a while to see what I can do. I find out the best I can do is stay with ballads.

Sometimes I'll have a whole song done without having a beat - I'll just rap on an instrumental tempo and recreate a whole new song just around the lyrics.

I've found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I've been writing about.

I sung from an early age and I was always given nice parts in school musicals, but I definitely wasn't the golden girl. I didn't have the guts. You've got to have a real confidence in yourself to be like: "I'm gonna be a singer and write songs." I never thought it would go anywhere because it's so unattainable to be a singer.

But this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you, that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.

It's a pretty crazy thing in which I tried to make songs, real songs, not the quick stuff like on a tape. A dose of Kendrick Lamar, a dose of J. Cole... because it's got to be an album that goes [in the] club.